


Fight Me

by sonatine



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Carterson, Cartson, F/M, One Shot, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3566516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonatine/pseuds/sonatine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Thompson is the new chief of the SSR, but runs into some opposition - figuratively and literally - from Peggy Carter.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>
  <i>She used her leg to wedge him off, and then flipped him over flat on his face, pulling his arms up behind him.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“How’s that feel, darling?” she said, her knee driving into the small of his back.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He was definitely not supposed to say good.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight Me

**Author's Note:**

> a companion piece to an upcoming fic

Jack Thompson was lazily holding his own in an impromptu boxing match until Peggy walked in. He’d finally become acclimated enough to her figure in a dress that he could work relatively well without distraction. But now, as she walked into the back storage room—the unofficial gymnasium of the SSR—in a white cotton short-sleeve shirt and men’s boxing shorts, he felt punch-drunk.

Ramirez landed a shot to his jaw while he was gaping at the doorway. Jack stumbled backward, scowling.

Ramirez did a sort of crowing victory dance as Jack motioned for a break. “Had enough yet, _Chief_?” He turned his head at the sound of a quiet snort behind them. His gloved fists dropped.

“Good lord, Carter.”

“Having fun, gentlemen?” she asked, dropping her handbag on top of a filing cabinet.

The storage room wasn’t so much a gymnasium as it was a mat laid down in the center of the room surrounded by stacks of boxes and miscellaneous rejected furniture. There was a punching bag shoved in the corner and a barbell lurking beside it—but for agents that often spent the majority of their day in an often stressful environment, the room had fast become a necessity.

Peggy moved toward the mat, rolling out her ankles as she did. Jack couldn’t take his eyes away from her legs. And her bare feet. Her nail polish was the same shade as her lipstick.

“Like what you see, Carter?” said Ramirez, flexing his arms.

“I’d like it a lot more if your form had been better,” she said, now working the kinks out from her neck. “That hook was sloppy.”

“Think you can do better?” he jeered.

She stepped onto the mat with a smile and narrowed eyes.

Ramirez’s grin grew wider. He turned to face her.

“Not you,” said Peggy. “I’d like a semi-decent fight at least. Provided that he hasn’t grown flabby sitting behind his chief’s desk.”

A choked laugh got stuck in Jack’s throat.

Ramirez shrugged, not sure whether he or Jack (or both) had been insulted, and stepped off the mat. He took off his boxing gloves and tossed them to her.

 

He was afraid to strike out at first. Even with boxing gloves—even though he knew what she’s capable of—even though it’s just sparring—he still didn’t want to cause her harm.

But Peggy was holding nothing back, and he had no choice but to defend himself. When she landed a punch directly to the underside of his jaw, all while taking a knee to his gut, he stumbled back. He saw Ramirez swear quietly, and then leave the room.

Jack rolled out his neck and turned to face Peggy.

“You’re fighting dirty,” he snapped.

“I fight to _win_.”

“It’s not winning if you ignore the rules.”

“The rules are: stay alive.”

“I’m not talking about some back alley fight, I’m talking about legitimate sporting guidelines.”

“Every fight is a back alley fight,” she said, throwing him to the ground. “For women, at least.”

The move was so reminiscent of how she’d taken him down behind the L&L Diner that he laughed to himself.

She stood over him with her hands on her hips and a wide smile on her face.

Fine. He’d been underestimating her. Most things came pretty easy to him, he’d admit it. He never had to work very hard for good grades in school, excelled at every new task he tried, and could charm people as naturally as he breathed. At least until coming back from the war, when mostly he’d been working on pushing them away. He’d let things slide. He didn’t care about trying hard. He cared about protecting his image, because if people’s esteem for him rose, maybe his own would rise as well.

But for Peggy, he wanted to try.

He kicked her feet out from under her. As she fell, he pinned her to the ground with his full body weight, forearm pressed against her neck. He got a thrill from the look of surprise on her face.

“All right, sweetheart?” he taunted.

She glared up at him. Her face was so close to his. He could feel her chest rising and falling beneath his own.

She used her leg to wedge him off, and then flipped him over flat on his face, pulling his arms up behind him.

“How’s that feel, _darling_?” she said, her knee driving into the small of his back.

He was definitely not supposed to say _good_.

 

It became an unofficial habit of theirs. Their sparring sessions were sporadic—usually after hours or early mornings before the rest of the office showed up—and never planned. On mornings that Peggy didn’t show up, or evenings that she left early, Jack would take out his feelings on the punching bag—making sure to clean up the ruptured file boxes afterwards.

Sometimes they would take a break and sit down on the mat to catch their breath and rehydrate. Oftentimes they would talk during these times: small talk and chitchat, only borderline personal. Jack liked it best when she talked to him like this—relaxed and sprawled out, her hair up in a sweaty ponytail, and with the flush of a good fight still on her face. No one else got to see her like this. Everyone else saw the professional Peggy. She was allowing him to see the off-the-clock Peggy.

 

During one of their bouts Peggy suddenly cried out and dropped her hands. Jack stared at her for a moment, nonplussed, because he’d been on the defensive. Then he looked down and saw blood trickling down onto the mat.

“I think I stepped on something,” said Peggy, stripping off her gloves. She sat down and examined the underside of her foot.

“Something metal,” Jack agreed, stooping down beside her. “It looks wedged in there pretty good.”

“Pull it out? I can’t get a good angle.”

Ignoring the tickle in his throat ( _don’t think about other contexts for what she just said,_ he instructed himself firmly), he took off his own gloves and gently slid his left hand underneath her heel. With his right he tried to get purchase on the tiny piece of metal still exposed—to no avail.

“Wait here,” he said, and left the room.

He returned a minute later with a first aid kit. He sat back down, fishing through gauze and bandages until he finally found a pair of tweezers. He bent over Peggy’s foot again.

“I heard a rumor last week,” Peggy said in an offhand voice.

“Yeah?”

Jack grasped the piece of metal with the tweezers and pulled it out. A hiss of pain escaped from Peggy.

“Sorry,” he murmured, carefully dabbing iodine onto her foot with a cotton swab. He kept his thumb pressed over the wound while rummaging through the kit with his other hand for a bandage.

“The word around the office,” Peggy said, her eyes trained on his face, “is that Ramirez’s black eye came from you, not from a bar fight.”

“Yep.”

Jack wound the bandage around her foot and tied the ends around her ankle. He let his fingers linger across her skin a little longer than necessary.

“May I ask why?”

She sounded breathless. He looked up to meet her gaze.

“Well,” he said, running a thumb down the side of her foot, “he accused you of getting all the good cases recently because of favoritism.”

“So you punched him.”

“No. I said that you get all the good cases because you’ve been doing better work than he has.”

“Well, that’s common knowledge,” she said teasingly. But he saw how pleased she looked.

He got to his feet and held out his hands. “Let’s get you up.”

She took them (her hands were so small compared to his, but lord could they do some damage) and pulled herself upright, keeping her injured foot off the ground.

“So when did the punching part happen?”

Jack shrugged.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “He was just angry and mouthing off.”

“Jack.”

He couldn’t refuse her anything when she said his name like that.

“He said why couldn’t I just marry you already and take you off everybody’s hands.”

He gave her a moment to compose herself. How often did she have to do that, mask her features and pretend it didn’t hurt?

“Well,” she said, “the joke’s on him. Perhaps I’ll never marry and work the rest of you into the grave.”

Jack snorted.

“As if I’d ever let some guy steal my best agent away from my office.”

Peggy’s hands twitched within his own. She tilted her head up. He closed the distance between them, stopping a hair’s breath away from her lips. There were footsteps approaching the storage room.

If people were accusing her of receiving favoritism now…

He pulled away, regretfully, as Agent Franklin came into the storage room.

“Chief,” he said. He looked down at Peggy’s legs. “What’s going on with your foot, Carter?”

Peggy tore her gaze away from Jack.

“Bit of rusty metal stuck in the mat,” she said. “Probably fell out of your shrapnel wounds, hm, Franklin?”

He chuckled. “Bad luck.”

Franklin stripped down to his undershirt and work trousers and went over to the punching bag.

Peggy turned to Jack and spoke over the sound of kicks and punches.

“Help me over to there,” she said with a nod to her things, “so I can get changed.”

 

The following week Carter’s work performance skyrocketed—just as her attitude toward Thompson plummeted. She fought him tooth and nail on every decision he made, challenging his orders, and even brazenly mocking an order or two.

He eventually called her into his office, slamming the door behind her. He turned his back from the windows, where the other agents were watching nosily from their desks.

“Is there a _problem_ , Agent Carter?”

He didn’t sit behind his desk like he normally would—making his agents stand before him like schoolchildren in front of a principal—but instead towered over her, arms crossed.

“I would say so, yes,” she said, staring back up at him, entirely un-intimidated.

“With my orders? Or just me in general? Because I’m starting to take this personally.”

“Your orders that we search the Staten Island house again? I doubt we’ll find anything new, it’s a waste of resources. We should be focusing on known associates instead.”

“Carter.” Jack took a step forward. “I value your opinion and trust your judgment, but this is my op and I have to be thorough—a botched investigation could come down on me like a hammer.”

“If what you’re worried about is _paperwork_ —”

“Someone has to. That’s part of the job, it’s not the interesting ground work that you’re used to.”

“That is such utter rubbish – don’t pretend like you took a bullet for everyone else by snatching all the glory for the Stark case and the chief job to boot.”

“I’m not.” He took a step closer. “But I also know you’re the brains _and_ brawn of this outfit. If I’m behind the desk, I can have you out in the field, laying waste like you do best.”

Peggy’s eyes flashed.

“Unless I take your job someday.”

He grinned.

“Oh I doubt that, darling.”

Jack caught her hand as it flew towards his face.

“Because you can do so much better. You’ll outrank all of us before long.”

Her gaze flicked to his lips. His hand tightened around her wrist. He considered, for a moment, of throwing caution to the winds—

But then she took a step back, blinking rapidly.

“Permission to investigate known associates instead of searching the Staten house again? Sir,” she added, the title sounding like a jibe more than an honorific.

“Granted,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Take Agent Jones with you.”

She nodded and left the room, flexing the hand he’d been holding. Jack wished he could be in Jones’ shoes right now.

 

Peggy was called into Jack’s office again a few weeks later. This time, she was surprised to find an outsider standing by the window.

“Howard!”

She rushed forward to embrace him and Jack was jealous of their evident familiarity and friendship.

“What are you doing here?” she said, glancing suspiciously at Jack.

“Only for good reasons,” said Howard, smirking.

“For once,” Jack added under his breath. “Stark’s—well—I’ll let him tell it.”

He watched Peggy react to the news that Howard wanted to branch out of weapons manufacturing and move into national protection. A new agency, not unlike the SSR, but more specialized, more covert, and better funded: by Stark Industries, of course. He watched her face, with a sinking feeling, when Howard told her he would need a partner. Someone he trusted. Someone who understood the line of work.

“I…” She was having a hard time fighting a smile. “It’s a wonderful ambition, Howard. And certainly an interesting job opportunity.” Her eyes flicked toward Jack (of their own volition?) for a moment.

Jack cleared his throat.

“We’ll miss you around the office, Carter,” he said, holding out his hand. _Me most of all_.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” she said. “I haven’t accepted yet.”

“You will,” he said confidently. “And you should.”

 

He was beating the living shit out of some jackoff in the ring of a seedy Lower East Side boxing club when the front door burst open, spilling daylight inside. Every man inside hissed, vampire-like, and turned in outrage toward whomever was letting the door hang open.

Jack could almost hear the jaws dropping.

Peggy strolled inside like she owned the place, replete in trench coat, marcelled hair, and red lipstick. She climbed over the ropes and into the ring, sloughing her trench over a post and kicking her heels off to the side. She was in those men’s gym shorts and a t-shirt.

Jack’s current boxing partner was leering. He knocked him out for good measure.

“I see you haven’t found a good challenge since I left,” said Peggy, stepping over the unconscious figure.

It was a mark of the club’s reputation that no one so much as moved forward to help the man. Nor did anyone bat an eye at this beautiful woman stepping into the ring. There was something to be said for places of low “propriety.” Oftentimes they turned out to be more accepting than cultured high society. The full one-eighty irony.

“Good partners are thin on the ground,” he managed.

They fell back into a familiar fight, though this felt less friendly. Peggy was swinging at him with an intense ferocity, one that he in all honesty felt glad to reciprocate. This just seemed to be the way with them: a swinging pendulum between wanting to punch or fuck each other’s daylights out. She drove him crazy, and he was certain that there were days where she’d felt like throwing him through a window, but the fact of the matter was: he missed her. Just all the time—around the office, at home, everywhere. He’d been conducting imaginary conversations with her in his head just about _nothing_ , about his _day_ —

And it was fine, he was glad she was at her new job with Stark (the weasel) and that she was finally getting the recognition she deserved—but this deep, selfish part of him wanted her back at SSR headquarters to—he didn’t know—talk to him, swear at him, just generally _be_ there.

After a vicious punch-and-elbow combination, she dropped her arms. She stood there looking thoroughly angry, and on top of that, furious _that_ she was angry. It was an expression that he knew well and it was a familiar ache to see it again.

“All right, darling?” he said, soft and mocking.

“I missed you,” she said.

He didn’t even try to block her next shot. It caught him right in the temple, sending him reeling.

He then moved forward, not with fists but with an embrace. He pushed her up against the ropes, pinning her arms to her side, and kissed her for all he was worth.

She pulled him closer, boxing gloves notwithstanding, and he could feel every outline of her body through the thin exercise clothes. Her heart was hammering in her chest almost as fast as his was. She was like pure adrenaline, Peggy was—everything about her went straight to his veins.

They broke apart some time later. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, although his previous boxing partner was still knocked out on the floor, so it couldn’t have been too long. It was easy to lose track of time with Peggy; it could be hours or seconds but they all felt like an infinite stretch.

“Let’s go,” said Jack, stripping off his gloves. He climbed out of the ring and waited for Peggy to do the same.

“Go where?” she asked, pulling her heels and trench coat back on.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Let’s get food then,” she said. “I’m hungry. Unless you have something else in mind?”

“Not particularly,” he said, grabbing his coat from the grubby rack by the door. He tentatively laced his fingers through hers—and when she didn’t push his hand away, he tightened his grip. It was a start.

 

* * *

 tumblr link [here](http://sonatine.tumblr.com/post/113935728759/fight-me)

 


End file.
